Friday, December 9, 2011

ON THE ROUGH

'From The Rough' is based on the true story of Catana Starks, a former swim coach at Tennessee State University who became the first woman ever to coach a college men's golf team. With drive, passion, and guts, she took an unruly group of mismatched kids from around the world and guided them to an all-time record at the PGA National Collegiate Minority Championship.

Tasked with building Tennessee State's first golf team and finding only one available African American golfer -- Craig (Robert Bailey Jr.), a former caddy with plenty of talent but no confidence -- Catana Starks (Taraji P. Henson) pushes outside TSU's Historically Black context, and, against huge resistance, opens up the roster to underprivileged kids from around the world: Edward (Tom Felton), a lower class British youth with a rakish charm and a contempt for authority; Bassam (Ben Youcef), a French-Algerian from Paris, angry about the discrimination of his people, soft-spoken but likely to explode; Cameron (Paul Hodge), an Australian from a single-parent household with a childhood spent working, using golf as means to escape; and Ji-Kyung (Justin Chon), a disaffected South Korean from Orange County with a love of hip hop.

Finding each of these wildly different players in places around the world is tough. Getting them to come together as a team is tougher. But Catana Starks relishes the challenge. At the end of the day, a person's character is determined by the adversity she faces. Against all odds, Catana Starks takes her underdogs From the Rough and turns them into winners.